Before the release of the Nintendo Switch, Nintendo seemed to want to cover all bases for Joy-Con development by filing numerous different patent designs. We now have some renders of what those patent designs would be.
These Joy-Con patents date back to the Japanese patent office in August of 2016, and from the image above you can see that the designs are quite strange to look at. Right off the bat, we can see the Nintendo Switch + Wide Joy-Con, which can be assumed to offer better grip in the hands of the user.
Following up on that there is the Joy-Con / D-pad that offers two D-pads instead of joy-sticks. This design would of been much better for platform titles or fighting games, but for gamers who play RPG titles on their Switch, they certainly would of suffered. Then we have the last render that shows off two control sticks, two control pads and two buttons each side.
It is interesting to see what these patents would of looked like if Nintendo ever decided to develop them, courtesy of LetsGoDigital for the renders.